Quick Insight: How to manage staff absence during coronavirus

The impact of coronavirus on staff absence

Staff absence management has always been complex and now you also need to know how to manage the following categories of absence:

• Employees who are off sick due to Covid-19 symptoms
• Employees who are off sick due to other reasons
• Employees who are self-isolating
• Employees unable to work due to economic reasons – furlough, redundancy and other options
• Employees who are presenting with absence issues due to the difficulties of homeworking

With newly introduced regulations and schemes from the government to manage the impact of coronavirus, there’s a lot of new information to take on board for HR teams. This on top of continuing to manage other staff absence e.g. annual leave and dependency leave, as usual, but within the wider context.

The key changes to staff absence under coronavirus

There are two changes which are of particular importance:

• Changes to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)
• Support to furlough employees under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

 

1. Changes to SSP

Under the Coronavirus bill, employees showing symptoms of Covid-19 are now entitled to SSP from day one with no need for a medical certificate. This is to help prevent spread of the virus. SMEs will be able to claim this back from HMRC, but as yet the process isn’t in place to do this. Therefore accurate record-keeping is essential.

You can also use SSP for employees who need to self-isolate if a household member develops Covid-19 symptoms.

The changes to SSP do not apply for other illnesses, or if an employee wants to self-isolate because they have a household member who is considered high-risk.

 

2. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

For employers without enough work or income to keep employees on, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is designed to allow you to use furloughing.

Furlough allows you to keep the employee in employment, without the need to pay them (or provide them with work). The idea is that you will then be able to quickly become productive again once the crisis has passed.

Under this scheme, 80% of an employee’s regular wage (up to a maximum of £2500), along with Employer’s NI contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions, will be paid by the government. It is not yet possible to claim, so again you must keep accurate records so that when you can, you’ll be able to access the full grant needed to cover the costs of keeping these employees on furlough.

Don’t underestimate the complexity

Here we’ve covered the two main ways that absence management has changed for the time being. Central to both of these new approaches is accurate record-keeping. Make sure you record each absence, including the new different types.

There is much more to understand about absence management during coronavirus. For a comprehensive understanding of all absence management related issues we recommend you read ‘The complete guide to managing staff absence during coronavirus’.